eight things

In response to Jennie at Straight From the Farm, here are eight somewhat random things about me, a few of which are similar to hers…

#1 – My very first job was picking strawberries; I was 11 years old. Payment was per pint, and I remember picking way too many pints when I first started. After a nice talk with an adult who owned the berry patch (who spoke with a raised voice), I no longer worked as hard or as fast. Still, I bought a BMX bike with my earnings from those few weeks in the strawberry fields.

#2 – My first car was a 1978 Olds Cutlass Supreme. It cost me $1200. My brother crashed it while I was away at college. I bought a 1979 Cutlass the next summer for $200. I should have waited a few years; I could have saved some money.

#3 – Occasionally I write a zine called Quitter that I print and distribute myself. Each issue is a document of personal stories set against my perceptions of a dying world. Each issue is $1. If you would like a copy of any or all of the issues, please let me know. An excerpt from Quitter #3:

“At night, on a rainy night, streetlights reflect off the machines and roadways, providing the only beauty we can concede to those objects. An overhead light beaming into a pool of oil-soiled water provides enough mystery, enough beckoning from some magical world below, that a concession of majesty is not much to ask. However, deep in those reflections are all the kings and all the slaves, all the coal-burning trains and all the diesel smoke nightmares. In those reflections we see the destruction we work so hard to avoid yet find so easy to create.”

#4 – I have been involved in some form of agriculture since I was 7 years old. Cabbage picker, USDA apple inspector, guerrilla gardener, and now produce manager. I still feel that I have barely scratched around in the knowledge of living systems and am constantly humbled by how much plants and non-human animals can teach us.

#5 – I have never actually eaten cricket bread, but I have threatened to do so many times. However, Noel has been collecting crickets from the fields. I may soon make that bread and end all threats.

#6 – I am a bicycle commuter, pedaling 10 miles round trip, 5 days a week. I do own a truck that I run on biodiesel, but I never drive to work or drive anywhere for that matter. The truck sits idle for months on end. Automobiles are useful tools and have their place. That said, I don’t eat pasta with a hammer or turn the compost with a microphone or drive for the fun of it or to simply get where I am going that much faster. It just never works out that way.

My status as a bicycle commuter will change when I move to the country, so I will have to reevaluate what the automotive tool is good for.

#7 – In the winter of 1995, I tracked river otters – fitted with radio transmitter implants surgically inserted into their abdomens by Cornell veterinarians – through the swamps of Western New York. The otters were being reintroduced into their native habitat after successful wetland rehabilitation projects made the environment hospitable again. This was during my junior year in college. My ornithology professor Dr. Beason asked the class if anyone wanted some radio telemetry experience. A few folks raised their hands, but I was the only one who showed up when the day came for training.

Each time I went into the field, I drove a buckled old Department of Environmental Conservation truck that stalled all the time. While driving I tried to hold a large radio receiver out the window and listen for the tick-tick-tick of the transmitter. After two weeks of monitoring, the tick-tick-tick disappeared, the theory being that the otters were too far into the swamp to be effectively tracked with the current equipment. My tracking stint ended soon after, but there is still an active river otter reintroduction program.

#8 – My father is an electrician, and during the years immediately before my birth he ran a television repair service. I was named after the electrical trace that appears on an oscilloscope when examining voltage, resistance and such on electrical systems, parts and appliances. Ah, irony…